I’m This Storm’s Spectator

You will have to excuse me tonight but I’ve become obsessed with our upcoming weather. This is a first for me. My first real California ‘winter storm.’ I’m trying to gauge how pre-game coverage matches what really happens.

Viewers often accuse TV stations of hyping weather for ratings. I didn’t think we did, but this is an opportunity to watch as an outsider.

The late run of the GFS is VERY wet through the weekend. More rain than we’ve had in the last year!

For 28 years I lived in Connecticut. The hills there were more gentle than California’s steep slopes. These amplify rain’s effects. Most people are surprised to see the width of some of our washes (dry river beds). The mountains will fill those washes very quickly.

But, again, I haven’t experienced this first hand. Most of my SoCal weather knowledge is book learning and observing from afar.

Where there have been large fires, where brush hasn’t yet reestablished itself, expect landslides. Truly, insult added to injury. Haven’t these people had enough?

The vast majority of hills will remain intact. It’s just tough to say which ground is solid at any given moment.

I can’t imagine the big stuff will be widespread. We had around 800,000 without power in Connecticut after Hurricane Sandy. That seems very unlikely. Widespread outages of any number seem unlikely.

The main thrust of the first wave of rain is still offshore to the northwest of us. The GFS says .42″ at John Wayne in Santa Ana, with most centered around morning rush Thursday.

Round two gets here early Friday. For this the GFS says 3.349″ at Long Beach over 48 hours or so&#185. That’s a huge amount of rain for this place to absorb. It won’t be absorbed gracefully or easily.

The good news is there are few basements to flood!

&#185 – QPF, how much we’ll get, is the least accurate surface forecasters make. Giving it to the thousandth of an inch, as I did, is ridiculous.

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